heathen and five of his earls fell down and died, and many thousands of the heathen side in the same place."[1] After which crowning mercy, the pious King, that there might never be wanting a sign and a memorial to the country-side, carved out on the northern side of the chalk hill, under the camp, where it is almost precipitous, the great Saxon white horse, which he who will may see from the railway, and which gives its name to the vale, over which it has looked these thousand years and more.
Right down below the White Horse, is a curious deep and broad gully called "the Manger," into one side of which the hills fall with a series of the most lovely sweeping curves, known as "the Giant's Stairs;" they are not a bit like stairs, but I never saw anything like them anywhere else, with their short green turf, and tender bluebells, and gossamer and thistle-down gleaming in the sun, and the sheep-paths running along their sides like ruled lines.
The other side of the Manger is formed by the Dragon's Hill, a curious little round self-confident fellow, thrown forward from the range, utterly unlike everything round him. On this hill some deliverer of mankind, St. George, the country folk used to tell me, killed a dragon. Whether it were St. George, I cannot say; but surely a dragon was killed there, for you may see the marks yet where
- ↑ "Pagani editiorem locum præoccupaverant Christiani ab inferiori loco aciem dirigebant. Erat quoque in eodem loco unica spinosa arbor, brevis admodum (quam nos ipsi nostris propriis oculis vidimus). Circa quam ergo hostiles inter se acies cum ingenti clamore hostiliter conveniunt. Quo in loco alter de duobus Paganorum regibus et quinque comites occisi occubuenint, et multa millia Paganæ partis in eodem loco. Cecidit illic ergo Bœgscee Rex, et Sidroc ille senex comes, et Sidroc Junior comes, et Obsbem comes," &c.—Annales Rerum Gestarum Ælfredi Magni, Auctore Asserio. Recensuit Franciscus Wise. Oxford. 1722, p. 23.
